If Still Your Orchards Bear

Brother, that breathe the August air

Ten thousand years from now,

And smell—if still your orchards bear

Tart apples on the bough—

The early windfall under the tree,

And see the red fruit shine,

I cannot think your thoughts will be

Much different from mine.

Should at that moment the full moon

Step forth upon the hill,

And memories hard to bear at noon,

By moonlight harder still,

Form in the shadow of the trees, —

Things that you could not spare

And live, or so you thought, yet these

All gone, and you still there,

A man no longer what he was,

Nor yet the thing he'd planned,

The chilly apple from the grass

Warmed by your living hand—

I think you will have need of tears;

I think they will not flow;

Supposing in ten thousand years

Men ache, as they do now.

Edna St. Vincent Millay